


where all roads lead

by Shattering_Colors



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Anorexia, Homophobia, M/M, Minor Violence, cindy is only mentioned in passing so I feel bad tagging her
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-06
Updated: 2019-06-06
Packaged: 2020-04-11 23:06:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19119550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shattering_Colors/pseuds/Shattering_Colors
Summary: This would certainly be one of those moments in a poorly scripted comedy movie who's the record scratch track plays and the not-really-even-funny main character goes ‘well, I’m guessing you’re wondering how I got into this situation’.





	where all roads lead

**Author's Note:**

> My friend asked me some time ago to write something for FFXV. So here it is. Shout @ me on Tumblr.

Prompto’s date scuffed his black, likely-very-expensive dress shoes on the sidewalk, wary of the wad of gum that reflected light from the dim street lamp directly above their heads of perfectly done hair, light that illuminated the world in front of the two of them. “Well, if I’d known we’d be sitting outside the building instead of inside like we planned, I’d at least have worn a dress with long sleeves.” Casting a quick glance to his left, Prompto eyed Noctis and saw that his dress shirt seemed to be made of the world’s thinnest clothing fabric ever created. The brunette’s point was sound.

Prompto spared a glance at his own three-fourths sleeved white, way-too-out-of-his-price-range borrowed shirt and shook his head in quick movements from side to side, trying to shake the blond waves from his hair that had, quite honestly, taken his far longer than he wanted anything to take, even if it was Cindy that was more than happy in assisting him in styling his hair. He didn’t understand the fuss of his classmates about gussying up for a school dance in which everyone stood around in clumps around the outskirts of the dance floor drinking the questionable punch. Part of his wanted this horrid nightmare of a night to be done and over with as fast as he could blink, but most of his wanted it to last an entire lifetime, even if they had been kicked out from their prom night by the photographs, then once again by an enraged chaperone.

This would certainly be one of those moments in a poorly scripted comedy movie who's the record scratch track plays and the not-really-even-funny main character goes ‘well, I’m guessing you’re wondering how I got into this situation’.

He couldn’t even say that it began at the front doors of the high school gym when they were told to leave, it had to have been far before that.

If Prompto had to honestly pick a time that all of this oddness with Noctis began, he’d pick when he was going for a run in the park, trying to burn off some of the calories from his unproductive weekend of studying for his trigonometry exam and worrying over the next track meet. After going around the misshapen figure eight loop three times, out of the corner of his eye, he caught a shorter teenage guy staring up at a tree, seemingly oblivious to the world. Prompto had drawn his eyebrows together, thought “that’s not even the oddest thing this town has to offer,” and continued on with his run.

When he plopped down on one of the park benches with one of the tiny plaques engraved in the middle of the wood rows, he only then remembered his promise that he had made to his physician, that he would not continue to run to the point of almost passing out. he always blamed it on something other than himself; ‘oh, well it was hot out then and I probably didn’t drink enough water’ or ‘I was studying so hard that I might have missed a couple of meals and then remembered that I had my run scheduled and I couldn’t not go on my bi-daily run’. Prompto never made good on his promise to the woman because he had, after all, crossed his fingers behind his back when he agreed. It might have been child’s play, but that still meant that the promise was nulled.

Upon looking up from the running app on his phone, his eyes automatically fixated on the guy with the dark, waist-length hair whose gaze was still fixated on that tree he had been staring at earlier. Prompto popped open the cap of his water bottle and took a swig before standing up on far-too-shaky legs and stumbling his way over to the guy like a fawn learning how to walk.

Prompto hovered a few steps away for a couple minutes, attempting to even out his breathing so that it didn’t sound like he was going to crumble into an unconscious ball of human on the spot. He spoke a few seconds after checking his pulse and forcing his lungs to accept the deep breaths he was taking. “You, uh, need any help there, Samara?”

The guy turned with his eyebrows raised, showing off his eyes. In the afternoon light, the guy’s amused eyes shined the way the ocean does at night, when all of the lights are off and the only sound for what feels like forever is the soothing sound of the waves meeting the sand.

“‘Samara’?”

Prompto blinked twice, feeling his heart rate pick up again and cleared his throat. “It’s the girl that comes out of the tv in that one movie?” The other guy nodded slightly, his midnight hair moving just barely bobbing along the base of his neck. Prompto did his best to disregard the observation his brain provided him with and opted to change the topic instead. “Say, ah, why’re you looking at this tree like it’s gonna combust somehow if you keep staring at it long enough?”

The guy seemed to swallow a smile, folding his mouth in on itself, forcing it into a jagged line. He did, however, allow the laughter to dance in his eyes. “Well, my cat got out. And, uh,” Sea-eyes gestured vaguely, “I don’t know how to climb a tree.”  
At this, Prompto raised an eyebrow. An opportunity for his to rescue a cat from a tree and impress the guy with the deep sea eyes in the same action? That certainly counted as a win in his metaphorical book. Prompto gave the guy his best blank stare. “So you thought if you stared at this tree long enough,” he gestured from the brunette to the tree in a definitive motion, “that someone would come to your cat’s rescue?”

Sea-eyes shrugged nonchalantly, doing his best to hide his embarrassment.

“Well, you were right.” He didn’t look back at Sea-eyes or down at his heart rate monitor before he began to scale the colossal pine tree.

He scanned each branch after the first few levels, knowing that a cat could certainly not sit on a branch that thin. Prompto himself could barely even secure his footing on it, much less actually trust that it wasn’t going to break off under his from his weight and leave his holding the other two branches in his hands and his leg dangling like a fish on a rod. He did, however, curse pine trees and their pointy needle leaves. The needles poked and prodded at him, but he continued on, thankful for his gratuitous exercise and the moderate adrenaline rush coursing through his veins instead of blood or any common sense.

A third of the way up the tree, he found himself staring face to face with a very upset cardinal. Prompto moved slowly when he finally released the branch from the white-knuckled grip of his left hand and gave the bird a wave. It squawked at his gesture of politeness, infuriated. Before either of them had the option to instill more fear in the othis, Prompto hoisted himself up another level of sharp green needles. his fluffy, dark-furred goal awaited his at the level above his own. Using another level of strength he was not aware he had, Prompto pulled himself up one last level to the cat. The branches he sat on were a third of the way away from the topmost point of the tree and were just a tad more thick that the branches at the bottom of the tree.

“Now how’d you get up here, huh, buddy?” Prompto hesitantly scratched the white patch of fur on the cat’s chest. “All we’ve gotta do is get down the tree without falling or sending the bird I passed a little while ago into a flying rage.” Tenderly, he scooped the cat up with one hand supporting its hind legs and another securing its head and arms over his shoulder.

It wasn’t the best or good even the proper way to hold a cat, that much he knew, but it was the way that gave his use of at least one arm, which would help them both in the long run.

Prompto had forgotten that it had been a long time since he had last climbed a tree and when he looked down at the branches below his, it seemed like something he was just going to have to act on the fly. With another living being slung over his shoulder.

The first few branches were the hardest. Finding his rhythm, avoiding the bird’s nest, and still holding the feline in his one arm made it all that much more difficult. A couple levels after he had passed the bird, he took a deep breath to calm himself and closed his eyes for a second before resuming his descent.

Following what felt like an eternity longer than taking a trigonometry test, Sea-eyes’s eyes lit up, signaling that Prompto was close to the base of the tree. Prompto curled his arms around the cat and judged the distance before determining that they wouldn’t be severely injured it he were to jump the rest of the way down. It turned out that he was half right. Upon jumping, he made sure to shelter the cat, but failed to bend his knees upon landing.

He handed Sea-eyes back his previously-escaped cat before collapsing to the lush, freshly mowed grass in unexpressed agony. “Hi, I’m Prompto, and I think I might have just either rolled my ankle or broken it. I think it might be broken because all I feel is pain and I can’t move it.”

Sea-eyes shifted the cat in his arms and blinked a few times, trying to decide how to process the information that was just given to him. “I’m Noctis. Let’s get you to the emergency room, then. It’s not that far away. Here,” he offered his hand. “Let me help.”

Helping a pretty guy with a beautiful name? Check. Although snapping his ankle like a thin twig was not apart of the plan, he sure accomplished that, nonetheless. Prompto’s foot was in a purple gauze wrapped bootie for far too long, in his opinion. A broken ankle meant no track. No track meant he couldn’t run and burn off his food.

What made it all a little less painful was that Noctis was the first person to sign his cast, and he did so with a blue glitter gel pen. Something else that also aided Prompto in feeling just the slightest bit better with his pain was that he and Noctis somehow formed a friendship.

And somehow, as it seemed, all roads lead to being kicked out of prom night.

Prompto chewed on the inside of his cheek for a moment, actually thinking over his words before speaking. “We should do something.”

“Such as?” Noctis's low voice hummed gently as the light flickered above them.

“Dunno. Maybe like checkers-.” Prompto cut himself off at the murderous look he was receiving from his best friend. “Alright, so a ‘no’ on checkers then. Because we’re not senior citizens yet.”

“Mario Kart?”

“That’s an even better idea than heading to prom even after we were threatened to be… y’know… publicly made fools of and all that jazz.”

The light flickered above them again. Noctis made a nod with his head to the cement path in front of them as a ‘let’s go have fun’ gesture. Prompto popped up, landing on the balls of his feet, turned like he was doing part of the moonwalk, and settled back down to a normal position to offer Noctis a hand up. It wasn’t that the other guy exactly needed a hand, the car accident from years ago affected his leg only occasionally and today was not a day of affliction. The offer, however, was one out of affection. Even if they were booted from their own dance, it wouldn’t stop them from being themselves.

Noctis's hand was in Prompto’s when he spoke. “Trash man.”

Prompto only felt his eyes narrow, not in confusion, but in exasperated recognition. “Trash dude?”

Ardyn, commonly known by his ironic nickname of ‘The Grouch’ by the select few he chose to torment both emotionally and psychologically. “It seems the two social deviants have sewn their hips together again, hm?”

“We don’t have time for your odd and offensive encounters, Grouch.” Noctis locked his gaze with the charismatic redhead and intertwined his fingers in Prompto’s and started forward.

“And where do you think you two might be going?” Faster than the blink of an eye, Prompto’s hand was torn from Noctis's by Ardyn. With the movement of a few fingers, Prompto’s thumb was bent back in a position he only thought was possible for human contortionists. “I’m fashionably late for the pathetic show of daddy’s little regret homo and we have the blond anorexic one, too.”

Prompto hissed a breath of air through his gritted teeth. “FYI, Trash Man, he’s anything but a regret to anyone that has a trace of a heart; I swing both ways and I’m working on my issues in therapy. Therapy might be a foreign concept to you, but you should invest in it.” Prompto snapped his body like a rubber band, and with a quick yet deliberate swing of his unharmed, clenched fist, he freed his thumb.

“Prom.” Noctis pulled Prompto back and conciseness wrapped an arm around the blond’s shoulders. “I think you broke his nose.”

“I thought he cracked his neck or something.” Prompto shrugged before wincing in heavily-regretted sympathy. “We should… we should go, shouldn’t we?”

Ardyn stumbled to his feet, with both hands dramatically clutched at his nose. “Yeah,” Noctis agreed, swinging the duo one hundred eighty degrees and beginning to speed walk the two of them away from the precarious situation. “Let’s hit it. We can deal with all of this later.”

In their dress shoes, the duo retreated to Noctis's penthouse apartment, heels slapping the pavement all the way.

The first thing Prompto did upon opening the door was kick off his black shoes and neatly place them next to Noctis's. “Do y’think we should have a dance or something? Or how about pictures? Can we take pictures?”

“Pictures sounds nice. Later?” It was Noctis's subtle cue that he wished for the dance first. he began to shift through music as Prompto shuffled awkwardly, taskless.

Prompto fidgeted with the ringer switch on the side of his phone. “So… who’s gonna lead?”

Noctis hummed serenely, in thought. “Do you want me to?”

Prompto tipped his head back and forth with a light smile. “Eh, yeah. Sure.”

The music started, swirling softly around the room, around the two of them when they joined hands to commence their dance.

“I’m glad that neither of us applied for that Prom Royalty jazz, honestly.”

Noctis snickered, scrunching his nose in the slightest way. “I’m glad that it wasn’t either of our noses that were broken. How’s your thumb doing?”

One, two, three, and Prompto halfheartedly glanced down at his reddened thumb. “Y’know, it’s okay for right now. I think it’s still the adrenaline or whatever.”

Noctis pulled his dry lips into a thin, sincere smile. “Well, we’ll get some ice later, ‘kay, Prom?”

“But I don’t want this to end,” Prompto replied simply, resting his head on the brunette’s shoulder. “We gotta do this forever, Sea-eyes.”

“I think we can do that, Prom.”


End file.
